


Compounded

by cat_77



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Deaf Clint Barton, Gen, Injury, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Possibly permanent injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-22 01:00:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12469976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_77/pseuds/cat_77
Summary: Things are never simple.  Like the wrap of bow string around a series of pulleys and points, everything needs to work in complex tandem to succeed, or occasionally fail spectacularly.





	Compounded

**Author's Note:**

> For the “side effects” entry at hc_bingo.
> 
> * * *

The compound was like any other: an old industrial site repurposed for new and likely less than legal uses, a seemingly barren and decrepit landscape surrounding it that provided far too much warning of anyone approaching. The supposedly broken fence around it read as coursing with live volts though, and the windows that looked shattered and/or streaked with dirt and grease were actually reinforced with a low grade force field just barely visible to the sensors.

The whole thing was designed to give any interlopers a sense of over-confidence, right down to the not-quite crumbling brick facade that covered pressure-sensitive circuitry. These particular interlopers were not to be fooled, however. They had the latest tech on their side, sensors nearly a decade ahead of anything commercially available and still years ahead of most of what was currently circling the black market. Added to that was a cloaked Quinjet that made a pass and noted any and all weak points as well as dropped a miniaturized drone programmed to create more. 

They were able to confirm multiple life signs roaming freely about the compound. More importantly, they were able to confirm these life signs flickered and faded when they reached a particular part of said compound, only to reappear perfectly fine when they left the confines of that area. It was this location that they wished to infiltrate. It was this location that they hoped held what they were looking for.

They hit the ground hard and fast and took on any and all on-comers with extreme prejudice. Natasha didn't even try to pretend to disable only, nor did she apologize for using Steve, Tony, and even Thor solely for the brute force they provided - not that they seemed to mind in the least. Bruce remained on the Quinjet for now, both protected and providing a means of rapid escape if needed. 

It didn't take them long to reach the area cloaked to the sensors. A glance showed a combination of tech and raw materials known for bouncing signals and creating jumbled returns, explaining why even Stark had not been able to confirm with one hundred percent certainty what lay beyond the barrier. A second glance showed a hallway littered with heavy metal doors with small barred openings hidden behind equally heavy shutters.

The first two were left open and she could smell the decay as she approached. Thompson was dead but Roberts still twitched. She was the one suspected of giving up her comrades though, hefty sums deposited in marked and unmarked accounts, some of which had disappeared as early as that very morning. It seemed the double-crosser was double-crossed herself, and Natasha could spare her no sympathy.

It was within the third windowless cell that they found what they were searching for. Back to the door, hands chained into position against the wall, body slumped to its knees and unresponsive despite the stuttered rise and fall of a heaving ribcage and choked, harsh breaths that filled the small area.

"Barton?" Natasha asked cautiously as she approached. She didn't want it to be him, even as she knew it could be no one else.

There was no response, no noticeable change in his position or actions. To say this was worrisome would be an understatement.

Long welts and gashes covered his bare back, a puncture wound the size of his standard arrowhead slowly seeped likely infection across the others, but he didn't flinch when she called his name nor did he react to the clear change in the airflow as the relative freshness of the hallway flooded in. The black fabric of the trousers he wore were shiny with the wetness of far too much blood, rips and tears showing a hint of the damage underneath.

She cocked her head to the side, contemplating. The air. There was a harshness to it that grated against her lungs, a chemical taste that brushed her tongue.

She dared to look away from Barton long enough to do a more extensive evaluation of the room he was in. She already knew enough that he was alone, had confirmed that before entering. None of the standard trigger devices had been present, but that didn't mean there weren't other threats. There was a camera in the upper East corner of the room, the little red dot continuing to flash away as it recorded unheeded. The floor wasn't littered with food or waste or the remnants of standard torture devices like she first thought though. There was blood and unsundries and the like, yes, but there were also small metal canisters, empty yet stained with what they once held.

"Flash-bangs and tear gas and a lot of them," she confirmed when Steve offered a quizzical look. Disable and disorientate. Take away anything that could be deemed a strength to break the captured that much faster. "Oh, Clint," she sighed under her breath, imagining what he had gone through in so short of time. The burn, the brightness, the noise, all in such a confined and unventilated area would have been intolerable in the least, damaging at best.

Steve reached for the chains now, explaining exactly what he was about to do as though to a skittish child. Natasha opened her mouth in warning, but it was too late and the metal was already snapped in two.

Clint whipped around already swinging as he stood, got a lucky hit in and apparently was fueled with enough rage to make it count. Either that, or Rogers was being cautious with the defense. Steve staggered back for just a moment before righting himself to try to contain their clearly wild and possibly insane teammate, but stopped when Natasha called for him to do so. Instead, he stepped back and away to both keep the others out of range and keep Barton as contained as possible, hopefully without creating any more damage to all involved.

Clint didn't respond to her voice, which was troubling enough. He did, however, respond when she slipped in and out of his flailing throws, dodged a kick and repaid it with a sweep of her own to take him down. She brushed her fingertips up along his injured arms before she wrapped herself around him in a sleeper hold, guiding as much as containing the inevitable collapse.

As he slowly crumpled to the floor he asked, voice raw and foreign and nearly unrecognizable, "Tasha?" He stopped flailing for the briefest of moments and she loosened the hold slightly, ready to complete the maneuver if needed.

It wasn't needed.

His hands patted clumsily until they found her own. She counted at least four broken fingers with possibly more dislocations very recently self-set, but he didn't seem to notice them at all. They rested atop her gauntlets for only a moment and she knew he could have used them against her even as she knew he never would. It was a confirmation of a sort and nothing more insidious, and she questioned why he did it right up until he whispered an agonizing admission of, "I can't see, Nat. I can't see and can't hear and if I didn't recognize your distinct way of kicking my ass, I would have tried to kill you and anyone stupid enough to come with you."

"I know," she replied. He couldn't hear her by his own admission, but she hoped he could feel the rumble of noise in her chest, the way she pressed her chin to his sweaty, filthy hair.

He cupped his broken hands around what he could of one of her own, the pressure non-existent, and she questioned just what he was doing right up until he said, "Red Lake."

She felt his body tense in anticipation, knew she had one chance to get it right or else they were in for a fight again, one he would clearly lose in his current state and that was not accounting the fact their teammates still stood around dumbfounded at the whole exchange. She remembered though. She remembered another time where he was left nearly blind, damn near stone deaf, and his larynx was far too bruised to make a sound that wouldn't mute him for life. She shaped her fingers carefully, remembered their half-assed way of communicating way back then, and hoped it would be enough for now. 

He sighed something that sounded suspiciously like, "It's you," before he collapsed against her fully, fight and possibly consciousness long gone.

"What did they do to him?" Stark asked, his voice overlapping Rogers’ question of, "What did they even want with him?"

Natasha looked over to them, but didn't have an answer, not yet. She shook her head but refused to release her current burden. "Sweep the complex, see if there are any other survivors," she ordered.

Steve and Tony left to do just that, and she had a feeling there would be a far more informal interrogation prior to any official review should they find anyone. Surprisingly, she was okay with that. She was also okay with the fact Thor remained nearby as watchdog and protector. No one would get through to Clint without her approval and Thor would guarantee that without her ever needing to lift a finger away from her self-appointed charge. 

Normally, she'd want to be on the front lines for this one, hunting down whoever dared to do this to someone she cared about, making certain not even the faintest traces of their existence survived once found. But Clint was vulnerable. Whether or not he was in his right mind, he at least recognized her if not the others. She was the only one she knew of for certain that could even communicate with him for now, not sure if Thor's AllSpeak translated half-assed hand signals and not certain Barton would recognize the big guy as anything other than simply a big guy given the lack of sight and hearing. She couldn't take that chance, wouldn't really. So she would sit this one out and let the boys have their fun, knowing she could always finish the job later if it came down to that.

What it came down to was several days in a cramped hospital room with a man who really did not want to be there. Normally the effects of tear gas wouldn't take quite that long to recover from, but the sheer amount Clint had been exposed to again and again meant his already normally sensitive eyes had become hyper-sensitive instead. Light was pain. The flushing treatments were pain. Air was pain. Focus was a fleeting thing, which just served to piss him off and make him stupid and increase the chance he'd do something to prolong his recovery and lead to even more pain.

So she stayed. She stayed and graced him with gentle touches, takedowns when he tried to escape, makeshift words when there were no other to share. She stayed while the doctors checked for permanent damage from the chemicals, treated wounds that added more scars to his collections, and murmured fears that healing may not equate full recovery. She stayed when his hearing faded in and out and while he swatted at what he thought was a buzzing sound deafening him to everything else, keeping his splints in place and moving anything that would disrupt them or him.

She stayed until he blinked eyes, bloodshot and rimmed with red, up at her and and whispered a hoarse, "Hello, beautiful." 

It was only after she had a verifiable means of explicit communication with him that she left. She told him precisely what she intended to do and the approximate timeline for said actions. He didn't make her promise to be careful or any such nonsense like that, but did request that she either record her findings, or describe them in exquisite detail once he was able to fully enjoy the effort.

The security measures around her intended destination were laughable enough that her teammates had essentially left a message in glowing neon lights that said "Have fun, Natasha. Do try to minimize the clean up." She slipped through to the supposedly impenetrable room and made certain her target fully appreciated her presence. A glance to the camera in the corner showed the little red light blink out and she knew the feed would be neatly looped, no indication she was ever there save for anything she herself was foolish enough to leave behind.

"Why Barton?" she demanded. She leaned against the wall with false casualness, body ready to strike in an instant.

Roberts pressed herself back against the pillows, tried to melt into the mattress of the hospital bed itself. When that failed, she reached for an emergency call button that simply didn't exist at the moment, the movement of the action alone seeming excruciating should Natasha care enough to take notice.

"There is no out. There is no escape. There is simply you telling me what you know in hopes that the remainder of your life may possibly have some redeemable value," Natasha warned her. She cocked her head to the side, watched Roberts' bruised eyes grow wide at even that simple of a movement, and repeated, "Why Barton?"

The interrogation took more effort than she really felt was strictly necessary but, then again, Roberts had been a trained SHIELD agent prior to her desertion and betrayal, so some resistance was expected.

What was not expected was the simplicity of reasoning. Roberts herself had done it for the money, disgruntled at her lack of upward mobility in the her life, both before and after SHIELD had fallen. She was to have simply provided intel as to where certain agents would be for a meet up. That she had been present at the meet up was an error on her part and careful planning on the part of the captors. Well, that and planning on the part of Clint and his cohorts who had suspected something was going down and prepared accordingly. 

Barton had wanted her there for leverage, and had not suspected the double-cross until Kathleen had ended up in the cell right next to his own. Why the hell her idiot partner hadn't involved the rest of the Avengers team, or at least Natasha herself, was a matter to be discussed at length when Clint was well enough to hit the mats again.

It all tied back to an op years ago. Clint had been part of a team with six others to take down a faction known only as "The Fusion" who specialized in obtaining footholds for drugs and arms sales and then both charging for protection or punishing for daring not to meet standards. Both Coulson and Sitwell had been involved then, as well as four other agents of complimentary skill sets. They had managed to take down the entire organization save for one escapee. Three of the kingpins were locked away seemingly for life and the remainder of the groups involved systematically destroyed piece by piece.

Flash forward to now, and two of the kingpins found freedom during the Hydra debacle with the third dying in his cell. Coulson and Sitwell were listed as KIA, as was Starling. That left Thompson, Rodriguez, Worthington, and Barton, all of which happened to find themselves tucked away in cells in a fake abandoned building in the middle of nowhere. Thompson was dead, Worthington was close to it, and Rodriguez and Barton had long roads to recovery ahead of them.

All for revenge.

When Natasha returned to Clint's side, Roberts breathing but not much more than that, the first thing he said to her was, "They never asked me a single question."

She climbed up atop the less than comfortable mattress with him, took him into her arms, and held him close in a way they would probably never admit they both needed. She rested his head against her shoulder and made certain her fingers were in sight of his limited range as well as within feel of his own damaged hands if he needed the verification, and replied, "I know."

Clint's sight retuned before any real semblance of hearing, and long before his bones knit back together or his stitches came out. Not fully, but far better than they could have dreamed of after weeks of treatment and it had only been days. It gave hope for a full recovery, of at least of one part of his pain as the rest of him was still a mess. That didn't stop him from escaping from his supposedly healing confines sooner rather than later. She found him at the range, trying to string his bow because Tony had taken the precaution of dismantling all but the ones locked up in the actual mission locker to at least slow him down if not stop him.

"Tony's an asshole," Clint said by way of greeting. The string kept catching on his splints, and his thin shirt revealed the bandage on his shoulder threatening to seep through with red.

She took a seat next to him and agreed, "Yes, he his. He's also trying to figure out a way to combine a hearing aid and comm for you in a way that won't be too visible or obvious."

Clint paused and stared at her for a moment, so she repeated the signs. He didn't take the bait though, not to mock Stark. Instead, he gave her a glimpse at his true mindset and fears and sighed, "That bad, huh? I was hoping for false platitudes instead of blunt honesty."

She shrugged. "Ask Steve or Bruce for that, maybe Sam if he's in the mood," she told him.

He made a face of discontent, but went back to his task quickly enough as if deeming the statement fair. She watched him struggle for a moment, then distracted him right before he hooked the final loop by waving a hand in front of his face to get his attention. He frowned, clearly seeing her ploy, but watched as she signed, "Do you want to know the percentages?"

He leveled a look of being less than impressed in her direction and she briefly wondered if he would let it go, bury it deep. They did that so rarely with each other though, so she wasn't really that surprised when he guessed, "Percentage of hearing loss: fucking high. Percentage of chance of recovery: fucking low." His tone and volume were no longer as carefully modulated, his anger and frustration beginning to seep through like the red on the soft gray cotton of his shirt.

"Pretty much," she admitted. She then amended that to, "For now. You've got a couple of pissed off geniuses working on the matter. You might want to let them in on your pre-existing issues to help them out though." The comment was pointed, as was the look she received for it. Both knew the likelihood the range was currently under observation. Both also knew that, eventually, Stark and the others would figure out why they already know how to sign quite so well. It wasn't Bahrain, it wasn't Budapest, and it wasn't a falsely ramshackle warehouse in the middle of nowhere. The details of how and why would be theirs to give, but the existence of fact would be hard to deny.

"I'll think about it," he relented with a sigh, which was about as much as she could hope for given his current status. A few more days, a few more nudges, and she was fairly certain an only partially redacted medical file would find its way to a certain desk.

"You do that." She offered what passed as a smile between them, and then offered him the bow with the final loop neatly in place. He'd still have to find where Stark hid the quivers, though there was still the chance he might just yank a few of arrows from the already decimated targets and work with those.

She stood and stretched and pretended not to know that Rogers would be waiting outside to check on a certain teammate. Clint raised himself to his own slightly ungainly feet beside her and pretended not to call her on it. "Thank you," he more whispered than muttered as he looked at the bow and range and decidedly not anything remotely to do with the actual object of his gratitude.

His eyes were on her again though when she shrugged and offered, "Just let me bandage those things for you again when you're done, or at least promise me you'll use more than duct tape and broken shafts to do so?"

He snorted and agreed, "Deal." He looked away again, but added, "I'll entrust myself to your tender care, so long as that care includes something eighty proof."

She made a note to steal something good from Stark's private stock, knowing Tony would just give it to her if she asked but that was not nearly as much fun, and nodded. Clint couldn't hear her anyway, his attention on the targets and sorting out which pieces were salvageable and which were a complete loss. She wasn't maudlin enough to think of it as a metaphor, but she was maudlin enough to know she'd be bringing two glasses when she visited him later.

She sauntered out to find Steve waiting on a bench near the entrance. "Give him twenty, I'll patch him up later," she requested.

"Yes, ma'am," Steve replied. He slouched against the wall and took out his phone to play with in the interim. She figured he would either use the text function to communicate with Clint, or was teaching himself ASL via the same app she saw up on a screen in Tony's workshop.

It wasn't a perfect solution but, much like them, it was one that worked for now. It could be augmented, adapted, made better, just like them. 

If no one resorted to violence out of sheer frustration before they actually achieved anything, that was.

It was three days later when she passed Sam in the hallway. Perhaps passed wasn't the right word so much as watched as he stormed by though. "That man is an asshole," Wilson announced as he passed. 

She didn't bother asking who as the hallway was the one that led to the range and one occupant in particular had been pretty much taking up residence there as of late. Sure enough, she entered to find Barton firing arrow after arrow into the targets on the far side of the room. Stark must have locked up the fun gear and/or Clint hadn't bothered to look for it as it appeared he had purchased several boxes of standard munitions from a nearby hunting goods store. He hadn't noticed her yet, so she waited him out, not dumb enough to startle an armed and angry man. 

Instead, she watched. She watched the extra concentration he took for the simplest of actions. She watched the way his shirt stained through with the sweat and blood from his injuries. She watched the tiny telltale tremor in his hands that spoke of being at it for too long. She stood perfectly still in the doorway until he turned around to reach for the protein shake one of the others - most likely Sam - must have left behind for him and he reluctantly acknowledged her presence.

"I knew you were there," he said defensively. Quieter, but lacking his usual modulation so it was still loud enough for her to pick up, he muttered, "Eventually."

She shifted her weight, unimpressed. It also served to let her enter the room completely and let the door slide fully shut behind her. "I could have shot you before you even turned around," she both said and signed. "This is a problem."

She expected a denial. Instead, she got a rather aggravated, "You think?" that was punctuated by the tossing of the bow he had been holding onto the pile of discarded boxes. It was a practice piece only, a compound bow just barely graded above commercial, but still troublesome that he would treat his gear that way and a further sign of his true level of frustration.

"Lock it down, JARVIS, and cease all recording," she requested as she stepped closer to the firing line. She didn't need to use any codes, not here, not with an AI that read her bio-signatures and authenticated her authority levels based upon her heart rate and respiration.

Clint didn't protest the action, but he did shift his stance slightly, ready for a fight if needed. At least some of him was still there then, and she now knew what she had to work with.

She didn't preface the discussion with any platitudes false promises. They knew each other too well to bother with such things. Instead, she simply began with, "It's been too long for the damage to just be from flash bangs and the toys we found left behind. What did they do to you? For real this time."

He sighed and she watched his shoulders slump before he tossed one final slightly bent shaft into the mess that surrounded him. He plopped down right in the middle of that detritus, and invited her to join him. She took the proffered seat cautiously, ready to move and take him down if needed.

It wasn't needed.

He spoke then, about his confinement, about precisely what happened, about the intensity and the duration and the level of pain. About the blare of noise at random intervals and intolerable levels to cover the captors' approach for yet another session. He described each and every thing done to him in as much detail as he could remember, as much detail as his mind allowed. There was more than flash bangs and tear gas, more than a single arrow shoved deep into his skin, more than the lashes that lined his back. These things she had expected. These things still filled her with a rage she thought she had left behind years ago.

"You will talk to Bruce," she declared when he was quiet for long enough that she deemed his story complete. At the look she received, she amended, "Ears only. He's more discreet than Tony, even though Stark will likely help with any technological designs needed."

"You think it's permanent this time?" he guessed. The lack of emotion to his words told her how deeply he felt about the matter.

"I think we can't take that chance," she admitted. "If it gets better, it gets better. But it's not going to happen overnight and you need something to help you function in the interim."

He snorted and threw out a bandaged arm to encompass the mess around him when he asked, "You don't think this is functioning?"

She rose to the bait, even knowing what it was, and offered him a less than kind look. "Even you aren't that stupid, Barton."

He snorted again, this time with far less derision. "Can I quote you on that?" he asked. "You know, for whenever you inevitably say otherwise?"

She stood and blinked as innocently as she could manage. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean," she said, complete with wide eyes and batted eyelashes. She also offered him a hand up, tried not to be surprised when he took it.

He looked away nearly instantly, took in the view of the battered targets and broken shafts. She noticed the residual redness at the corners of his eyes, the shadows that came with the strain and lack of sleep that was no doubt hampering his recovery. "Do you really think they can fix me?" he asked.

She waited for him to look back at her, saw a glimpse of both hope and hopelessness. She continued her practice of both signing and speaking at the same time to offer, "Of course not, you're far too broken and busted for that." When he laughed the way she knew he would, she amended her response to, "But they're going to try anyway, use everything in their power to succeed."

"They have the technology, they can make me better?" he guessed.

She smiled despite herself and nodded towards the door. "Come on, Mr. Austin. I've got a takeout menu and a bottle of something with 'Glen' on the bottle I stole from Stark. There were numbers on it; I think it's a suggestion of how many glasses we should have."

He glanced back at the room and asked, "Should I clean this up first?"

"Nah," she told him. She hooked her arm around his elbow and gave it a gentle tug. "I have it on good authority that we have an entire team that likes to take care of messes."

He rolled his eyes but she caught it anyway, the way the corners of his mouth darted up just barely, the lines of the frown he had worn for days smoothing out to something a little bit different. It was a start. She had worked with far less in the past.

Besides, she was fairly certain she wouldn't be working alone this time.

 

End.


End file.
